Healthcare 2.0: Millennials Under Obamacare (VIDEO)

“Healthcare 2.0″ Our Generation Under Obamacare” was moderated by Gen Opp’s Corie Whalen and featured commentary by Evan Feinberg, the President of Gen Opp, and Rituparna Basu of the Ayn Rand Institute.

The webinar took place on day of the deadline to sign up for health insurance without facing a penalty from the government, but Feinberg noted that President Obama essentially extended the deadline almost indefinitely due to desperation for higher enrollment numbers.

But even if they wanted to sign up, young people couldn’t.

“First of all, healthcare.gov was down for five or six hours this morning,” Feinerg noted.

According to Gen Opp, young people just aren’t signing up, and good luck trying to get enrolled when the faulty, multi-million dollar website is crashing.

“Young Americans aren’t signing up for this bad deal,” Feinberg said.

Rituparna Basu, who recently wrote a report on American healthcare for the Pacific Research Institute, noted that Obamacare’s “central scheme” is bad for young people.

“A major goal of Obamacare was to lower costs [for older, unhealthy Americans]…and their solution was, ‘let’s just pass on the bill to young people,’” Basu said.

She explained that the individual mandate exists to force young, healthy people to get health insurance even though it is a bad deal for them.

“If you think about something like your car insurance, if you are a safe driver, you get charged a lower premium, whereas if you have a history of accidents you get charged a higher premium,” Basu said. “In health insurance that’s not the case.”

Basu said that some young people have seen their premiums more than double as a result of Obamacare.

“Obamacare and the government are basically viewing young people as disposable, that their dreams and their hopes can be sacrificed, and that’s not right,” she said.

The burden of Obamacare is part of what Feinberg considers “the latest front in a broader war on youth.”

Check out the full webinar from Generation Opportunity below:

Featured image: a screenshot from Gen Opp’s “Creepy Uncle Sam” ads urging young people to opt out of Obamacare.